


Just a Game

by Anny_the_Kitty



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Allegorical, Angst, First Kiss, M/M, from egocentric geniuses with no social skills to... people who think a lot about one another
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:49:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anny_the_Kitty/pseuds/Anny_the_Kitty
Summary: They’re kids on a playground. Nothing more, nothing less.Even though saving the world is their twisted game, they never actually admit they’re playing.Even when they light it on fire instead.





	Just a Game

They’re kids on a playground. Nothing more, nothing less.

That’s how it starts.

Everyone else is a prop. A perfectly replaceable shiny new toy they wave in each other’s faces. “Look,” they seem to want to say to each other. But they never actually say it. Even though saving the world is their twisted game, they never actually admit they’re playing.

Even when they light it on fire instead.

…

Light had wanted to be a hero, once. He’d seen a rotten world, and forgotten that Hamlet had died of poison.

It’s easier, in the end, to play a game. To pretend you get do-overs and the corpses you leave behind are just unnecessary pawns. Inconsequential. It’s easier to play a game of cat and mouse. To write a story where you get to take entrance exams and play tennis and make friends. It’s easier to handcuff yourself to your impending damnation and pretend it hasn’t been a long while since the last time your soul has felt so human.

It’s easier, for Light, to lie.

…

L sees past him, though.

He’s grown bored over the years. Tired of two-dimensional puzzles that take half a minute to solve if he’s choosing to take his time. Deneuve, Coil, Ryuzaki, they’re all just attempts to make the same old joke seem funny again. It doesn’t work. Until it doesn’t have to.

The Kira case isn’t a puzzle. It’s a whole, realistically-proportioned labyrinth, and L’s mind itches with the urge to explore it all.

He will realize, later, that running inside may have been his first mistake. But he won’t mind. Not if it gives him another chance to utter _checkmate_.

…

It’s easy, when playing a game, to get sidetracked.

They both know this. They both forget they do, when facing each other.

…

They kiss, once. That too, is a well-thought move. (Or so they tell themselves, tongues moving in synchrony, hands roaming, mapping out each-other’s bodies, trying desperately to _understand_.)

It’s still a game, even as L pushes him on the bed.

…

L wonders if dying in Light’s arms is supposed to be a poetic farewell. It feels more like a missed opportunity.

…

Light doesn’t cry when L dies. He doesn’t laugh either. His _victory_ tastes bitter on his tongue.

He _does_ laugh when his father—the same man who had, once upon a time, missed three consecutive birthdays and generally made a point out of treating raising him like a job he wasn’t particularly sure how to go about doing—drags Matsuda along and leaves him standing in front of L’s grave.

He wonders when he’d become so obvious. If he’d ever been an honest man, he would wonder when relief had started feeling so much like loss. (Like anger, like insanity, like _grief_.)

He misses—

…

Light's own death is nothing more than a forethought plot twist he’d somehow managed to forget about. It’s a _choice_ , by all means. He can practically see the replay button.

It’s still a game.

(Even after the world burns.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only ten years late to the party, on average. Comments sustain my feedback-starved soul.


End file.
